


papercuts from rulebooks

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Law & Order: UK
Genre: F/M, Romance, post 1x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-23
Updated: 2009-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-16 12:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5829109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People will say we're in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	papercuts from rulebooks

She has heard the rumours, of course, has heard them all – she is not stupid.

It used to bother her, when she first started working here and it was becoming obvious that James trusted her and counted on her and respected her and- and George kept giving her strange looks for a while; of course Alesha couldn't know why, couldn't know that it wasn't normal behaviour for James, that it was, in fact, _a first_ (“oh, he does pretty much everything himself”, somebody told Alesha when she asked if the job was hard). It used to bother her because she was not that girl, she had worked too much, worked her ass off to get this position and nothing was going to cheapen that down.

But they soon settled into a pattern, in which everybody whispered about them from time to time and just _assumed_ and George stopped acting all suspicious and Alesha just kept doing her job.

If James knew anything about the rumours, he never let on.

It doesn't help the gossip, of course, that she and James are usually the last ones to leave the building.

`Do you ever sleep?´ She says when she finds him still at the office at eleven-twenty after she's come back from meeting with a witness in Mile End.

He looks up; there's a bit of pride in his smile, he points at the files and folders and photographs spread over his desk.

The case is a mess: the only witness is an illegal immigrant by the unbelievably clichéd name of Tanya, she is too afraid to testify and James can only promise to help her out with the papers if they win the case.

Alesha doesn't wait for permission; she sits by his side and they start working, the city's noise changing outside, becoming sharper and more unpredictable. But she feels happy in moments like this, James doesn't even have to say nothing, just let her stay, shoulder to shoulder, fighting their version of the _good fight_.

 

\--

 

James can always tell how fucked up they are because George always seems preemptively angry with him. With Alesha, too. Tuesdays in court are a torture, but then again, what day is not. Alesha rushes in with a heavy pile of her research in her arms – she is justifiably in a rush and her robes can't quite fit as well as they always do. James is a bit alarmed that he noticed this.

George shoots her a hard, overstated glance -she is late- but Alesha stands it, refuses to look away, challenging him. James is impressed, George normally gets away with being Mr.Grumpy.

It is the neck of her shirt, James realizes, it is a bit skewed and it throws the whole attire off balance.

They lose the case – Tanya loses her green card and the murderer goes free. They had been on a good streak lately but you always remember the ones you lose. After the verdict James lingers in the courtroom, waiting for George and Alesha to leave. To leave him.

But he finds Alesha sitting outside the court, her heels scrapping the white stone of the stairs, looking out at the traffic towards Aldwych. 

It suddenly hits him that maybe he is not the only one who thinks losing a case sucks. He feels amused by his own selfishness. He decides to sit with hair on those stairs, but he puts his briefcase between them, some sort of symbolic wall or something. 

The evening air has turned winter-cold. Stupid Tuesday trials. The air is so cold it stings the eyes.

`Hey. It's alright,´ he tells her. `This doesn't mean you've done less than a perfect job.´

He places his hand on her arm, just above her wrist. It's a tentative, friendly touch, his fingertips buried under the folds of her robe.

`Careful,´ she says with strangled humour. `People will say we are in love.´

James returns the smile, but it's blunt-ended, without light. There's an extra heartbeat there and James looks away.

 

\--

 

`You really do never sleep, don't you?´

James looks up, so obviously pleased to see her that even Alesha feels compelled to take a step back, the opposite of courage. Instead: she comes into the office, papers spread carefully over the desk, James sitting on the couch with a quizzical look on his face.

`I'm just brushing up some things, putting the files away.´

Alesha gives him a look that's like asking for permission and he nods; she sits on the couch, close to him, their knees just barely not touching, their knees not touching as if in some sort of unwritten menace, Damocles' sword.

`I used to have a teacher at college who said one should never archive their lost cases and their victories separately,´ James tells her, `because then it's impossible to get any work done. If you kept thinking about the one who got away...´

She thinks it's ironic, and James probably thinks that too. Even if she's never heard of a martyr with sense of humour before.

`I had a teacher who said the important thing was never to show up drunk in court.´

`Good advice,´ James says.

The case file still open on the table.

`You archive them separately, don't you?´ 

He looks up at her – some days it's so easy to read him, Alesha thinks, like she had been handed the manual on her first day in the office and now she can't _unlearn_ it.

`I like to keep a tab on myself,´ he replies.

There is no reason in particular why it should happen tonight, except that there's no one in the office and all lights are off, all lights but one, and here they are, Alesha thinks, a conspiracy against the world outside, James and Alesha, people tell lies about them and most of them are completely true.

She kisses him.

She kisses him because there's no particular reason why tonight, and because everybody said that this job would turn her into a cynical and it turns out she's never felt more naive than when she is with James. She kisses him because they have lost the case, and because he always takes it this bad.

This is the part she didn't anticipated: James kisses back. He pushes his tongue past her teeth and holds her with one hand on the back of her neck. It's so fast that she doesn't know _how_ it all happens. There was no agenda here, except now she realizes she has been holding out, on _this_. Her face feels hot, James' fingers buried like a secret under her hair, he tastes of citrus, coffee and calcium, he tastes of sleeplessness.

Alesha is not sure what happened but her knee is pressed against his thigh and she is grabbing his tie and pulling at it, as if he could get any closer – he can't. It is then that they reality of the situation hits them in the same way one might draw a breath when the air is just too cold, and it hurts, it hurts and it's alive.

They stop. (it's hard to let go – his hand lingers on her back for one second and a half, hers hold on to his tie even half a second longer than that)

`Not here,´ she says.

`No,´ James agrees. `Never here, no.´

It is a half-uttered rule. Which implies a follow-up. Alesha is just happy James hasn't cut her out completely. He hasn't exactly refused her. She'll take that for now.

 

\--

 

He waits for her in a boozer near Holborn, packed with students from the LSE. James feels suddenly old and thinks Alesha is just the right age to slip between the short-skirted posh girls and the Asian exchange students and the City boys watching the match on tv. James thinks she is beautiful but nobody notices her. She used to think she was invisible, she confessed some months after she started working for him.

For a time James believed it too, that she was invisible.

She orders two pints of Guinness and sits with her back to the plasma screen. Chelsea is playing.

`So...´

`So?´

Alesha smirks. She takes a sip of her drink a bit too quickly. James finds her beautiful and nervous.

`You know what they say in the office, right?´ She asks.

`About what?´

She makes a helpless gesture.

`You know people talk about us, don't you? I have never been able to figure out if you knew and were just being purposefully oblivious or if you really had no idea.´

James frowns. There's a near-miss in the match and half the pub make falling sounds, there's fucking U2 playing in the jukebox but it's muffled by all the noise and the clink of glasses and the football commentary, and James looks at Alesha and wonders how he has come to this.

`This is not going to work,´ James says, with a weary smile.

Alesha rolls her eyes; she takes the napkin from under her drink and starts folding it into a yet smaller piece.

`I was expecting this,´ she comments, casually.

James is a bit thrown off by her sudden confidence. How long, he wonders. How long she's known, how long has this been going on. _Moron_ , he thinks, amused. She seems angry, though. He takes her elbow in his hand and that seems to give her pause – James can feel her holding her breath for a moment. He runs his fingers up and down her arm, a sudden rush of possessiveness getting hold of him.

`I don't really want to take the chance of fucking up your life,´ he says, very softly.

Alesha snorts, pushes his hand away.

`I can make informed decisions. My life is mine to fuck up. Don't be arrogant, James.´

`You know me, I _am_ arrogant.´

She gives him _a look_. Even now, in this semi-date, this elliptical slouching towards disaster, Alesha can see right through his bullshit.

`And over-protective,´ she calls out.

`But I am supposed to be that, too. You are supposed to learn from me and I'm supposed to-´

She stands up, as if to leave. James wonders if that's it. Is that it? He feels his stomach fall, twist. This is what you wanted, he thinks, so then _why?_

`Don't patronize me,´ she says, _not leaving_. `Not after all that's happened, not after Slade, after these past few weeks. We are a team.´

James nods softly. The pub is getting too loud. Chelsea is losing. Alesha takes his hand and leads him through the room to the door.

 

\--

 

The cab ride is mostly wordless.

She doesn't let go of James' hand – she has the feeling that if she gives him a way out, even the smallest window of opportunity, he is going to chicken out. She remembers George telling her once that James is a great guy but he is really lousy at _being happy_. She didn't think too much of it at the time and even she has to admit that there's a part of herself that finds that sadness appealing, James and his crown of thorns that nobody is supposed to talk about but all should silently respect. It is impolite of the new girl to be asking questions, and so the time passed. And so they are here now, in this cab, hand in hand, crossing Blackfriars Bridge, south back to her flat.

This is not James being happy, not _right now_ ; Alesha doesn't know what it is, though, expect that he turns her hand on the leather seat and starts drawing lines along her lines of destiny and life.

She smiles nervously; there is a kind of _need_ there she's never quite felt before. She remembers her high school boyfriend, she remembers her college boyfriend, she remembers the one night stand she had on the night of her last exam. 

This is not quite like it. 

They pass an ambulance in Waterloo and the red and white lights flash on James' face for a moment. She sees it, the fear, and the way he clutches at her hand now, crushing her a bit, as if holding on for dear life.

It's fucking twelve pounds when they reach her street and Alesha stumbles clumsily, trying to find her purse. Maybe James was right. But then James rests his hand on the small of her back while she unlocks the door and she thinks, okay, maybe he was wrong too.

 

\--

 

It is a bit crammed, James admits, your usual low-range South London house, but he finds it exciting: the narrow corridor, the out-of-order lift, the creaky doors and then – then everything smells of Alesha and he thinks _fuck_ , there are socks drying up over the radiator, there's an issue of GQ open on the coffee table, and unopened bills on the bureau.

And everything smells of her.

He spends too much time in the bathroom, trying to figure out if he is too old for this. He stares at himself in the mirror, what was he supposed to do in the first place? Teach her how to be a good prosecutor? Good luck with that, she'd have figured out sooner or later, anyway. She is too smart for this, as well. She is not that girl and James definitely doesn't want to be that guy – but he is. He's had a hard-on ever since they stepped in that cab and Alesha took his raincoat and carried it with her, folded over her knees and she refused to look anywhere but ahead.

When he comes out Alesha is taking off her jeans. The curtains of her room are apple-green and the street-light comes in odd, softened and her skin seems like a Cezanne sketch for a moment, grey, ashen, ordinary and miraculous. She is beautiful – but people never look at her. James can't stop looking now.

She stretches her arm across the bed, not an inviting gesture but a conciliatory one, _it's alright_ , but yes, _come here_ too. They meet halfway. They always do that. A _team_ , she said, and that they are, Alesha and James. Within five minutes they are lovers as well, but still Alesha and James. He had forgotten what that word meant, _lovers_ , the fucking awful weight of it, the companionship, the mild embarrassment, the sweat, the kisses that never fall quite on the right place, the impossibility of building up a rhythm, better luck the next time.

But then it evens out – Alesha never stops looking at him, and when he comes she stills looks at him, and gives him a grateful smile.

It is a strange word on his mouth - _lovers_ -, he can't quite place it. And Alesha, she... this girl, she-

`I never thought I was that kind of person,´ she says teasingly, running her hand through his hair.

`What kind of person?´

`The kind that shags her boss.´

James closes his eyes. The orgasm-endorphines lulling him, he really doesn't want to have this conversation right now. Or ever.

`I'm not that kind of person, and I'm not exactly your boss.´

`I'll remind you of your words next time you make me go make you coffee,´ she says, then, more seriously, frowning: `But anyway the shagging part is not the problem.´

James pretends to be asleep already; he is _that much_ of a coward. He hears Alesha sighing, ìt's everything else´, before quietly resting her head against his shoulder. _Everything else_ is the problem.

In the morning James discovers that Alesha likes eating oat clusters with tiny bits of strawberry. He discovers that he likes knowing little things like this about her. In other words, he is fucked.

 

\--

 

George has been looking at her weirdly for days now.

`You are a smart girl, Alesha,´ he would say cryptically at any given chance. `Don't be _stupid_.´

She dismisses it, explains; all offices have their own mythology, _people will say we're in love_ , there's nothing here, nothing to see, keep on walking. George doesn't quite buy it and Alesha finds it strange he warns her when, actually, James is the one who is his friend.

Nothing much changes, it's a slow-burning struggle, except that today, when James asks her for a coffee, they exchange a private, tense smile.

Alesha waits until he is ready to leave, way past everybody's working hours. He holds the door for her, she holds his raincoat in her arms. People will still gossip, out of habit, mostly. They never leave the building hand in hand, they are careful, practical. A team. It doesn't necessarily mean they don't leave the building together each night, because they do.


End file.
